Kate was
a rather incompetent career criminal who had served several prison terms for
various thefts and offences of dishonesty, both in her native Ireland and in England. These included a
period of 12 months in 1877 in London's Wandsworth
prison, where she would ultimately die.

She was born
Catherine Lawler in 1849 in Killane, Co. Wexford in
what is now the Irish Republic and started her criminal career at an early age.
She claimed to have a married a sea captain called Webster by whom, according
to her, she had had four children. Whether this is true is doubtful, however.
She moved to Liverpool stealing money for the ferry fare and continued stealing
once she arrived there. This was to earn her a four year prison sentence at the
age of 18. On release, she went to London and took work as
a cleaner - often "cleaning out" her employer's possessions before
moving on. In 1873, she settled at RoseGardens in London's Hammersmith
area. Her next door neighbours were Henry and Ann Porter whom she got on well
with and were to feature later in her story. She moved to Notting Hill to a new
job as a cook/housekeeper to Captain Woolbest and
whilst in his employ, met a man named Strong with whom she went to live and
became pregnant by. She duly gave birth to a son on the 19th of April 1874 and was promptly abandoned
by Mr. Strong. Without any means of support (there was no Social Security
then), Kate resorted to her usual dishonest practices and served several prison
sentences as a result.
On release from Wandsworth in 1877, she again sought domestic work - firstly
with the Mitchell family in Teddington, of whom she
was to say that they didn’t have anything worth stealing. She was constantly on
the move at this time and used several aliases including Webster and Lawler.
Sarah Crease, another domestic servant, became friends with Kate somewhere
around this period, and it was Sarah who found herself looking after Kate's son
during his mother's spells in prison.

The
murder.On
the 13th of January 1879, Kate entered the
service of Mrs Julia Martha Thomas at No. 2 Vine Cottages, Park Road, Richmond. To begin with,
the two women got on well and Kate recorded that she felt she could be happy
working for Mrs. Thomas, who was comfortably off, although a rather eccentric
woman in her mid 50’s.Soon however, the
poor quality of Kate's work and her frequent visits to local pubs began to
irritate Mrs. Thomas and after various reprimands, she gave Kate notice with
Kate's dismissal to take effect on Friday, the 28th of February. This period of
notice was a fatal mistake on the part of Mrs. Thomas and she became
increasingly frightened of her employee during its period, so much so that she
asked friends from her church and relatives to stay in the house with her.
Friday the 28th arrived and as Kate had not managed to find a new job or any
accommodation, she pleaded with Mrs. Thomas to be allowed to remain in her
house over the weekend. Sadly, Mrs. Thomas agreed to this - a decision that was
to cost both women their lives.
On the Sunday morning (the 2nd of March
1879), Mrs. Thomas went off to church as usual. Kate was allowed Sunday
afternoons off work but had to be back in time for Mrs. Thomas to go to the
evening service. This Sunday afternoon Kate went to visit her son, who was as
usual in the care of Sarah Crease, and then went to a pub on the way back to
Vine Cottages. Thus she got back late which inconvenienced Mrs. Thomas, who
again reprimanded her before rushing off so as not be late for the service.
Fellow members of the congregation noticed that she seemed agitated, whether
this was because she suspected Kate's dishonesty and feared her home was being
robbed, is quite possible. Whatever the reason, Mrs. Thomas left church before
the end of the service and went home, sadly without asking anyone to accompany
her. Precisely what happened next is unclear. In her confession prior to her
execution, Kate described the events as follows : "We had an argument
which ripened into a quarrel, and in the height of my anger and rage I threw
her from the top of the stairs to the ground floor. She had a heavy fall. I
felt that she was seriously injured and I became agitated at what had happened,
lost all control of myself and to prevent her screaming or getting me into
trouble, I caught her by the throat and in the struggle choked her." At
her trial, the prosecution painted a rather different picture. Mrs. Thomas'
next door neighbour, Mrs. Ives, heard the noise of the fall followed by silence
and at the time thought no more of it. Little was she to suspect what was to
happen next. Kate, of course, had the problem of what to do with the body but
instead of just leaving it and escaping, she decided to dismember it and then
dispose of the parts in the river. She set about this grim task with a will,
firstly cutting off the dead woman's head with a razor and meat saw and then
hacking off her limbs. She par-boiled the limbs and torso in a copper on the
stove and burned Mrs. Thomas' organs and intestines. Even Kate was revolted by
all this and the enormous amount of blood everywhere. But she stuck to the job
and systematically burnt or boiled all of the body parts and then packed the
remains into a wooden box, except for the head and one foot for which she could
not find room. It has been said that Kate even tried to sell the fatty remains
from boiling the body as dripping. Mrs. Ives was later to report a strange
smell from next door (which was caused by the burning). Kate disposed of the
spare foot on a manure heap but was left with the problem of the head, which
she decided to place into a black bag. She continued to clean up the cottage on
the Monday and Tuesday and then "borrowing" one of Mrs. Thomas' silk
dresses went to visit the Porter family on the Tuesday afternoon, taking the
black bag containing the head with her. She told the Porters that she had
benefited under the will of an aunt who had left her a house in Richmond which she wanted
to dispose of, together with its contents, as she had decided to return to Ireland. She asked Henry
Porter if he knew a property broker (estate agent) who might be able to assist
her. Later in the evening Kate excused herself and went off, ostensibly to
visit another friend, returning later without the black bag which was never
found. Both Henry Porter and his son Robert had carried the bag for Kate at
various stages of their walk to the railway station and two pubs along the way
and both noticed how heavy it was. This left Kate with the rest of the human remains
in the box to dispose of and she sought the services of young Robert Porter to
help her in this, taking the lad back home with her for the purpose. She and
Robert carried the box between them to RichmondBridge, where Kate said
she was meeting someone who was taking the box and told Robert to go on without
her. Robert was to hear a splash of something heavy hitting the water below a
few moments before Kate caught up with him again.

The box
was discovered the next morning by a coal man who must have had a horrible
shock when he opened it. He reported his discovery to Inspector Harber at Barnes police station and the police had the
various body parts examined by a local doctor who declared that they were from
a human female and noticed that the skin showed signs of having been boiled.
Without the head, however, it was not possible to identify the body.
Kate meanwhile was calling herself Mrs. Thomas and wearing the dead woman's
clothes and jewellery. She kept up pressure on Henry Porter to help her dispose
of the property and he introduced her to a Mr. John Church, who was a publican
and general dealer, who she persuaded to buy the contents of the house. Kate
and Church seemed to rapidly become friends and went drinking together several
times. The real Mrs. Thomas had not been reported missing at this stage and the
papers referred to the human remains in the box as "the Barnes
Mystery," a fact known to Kate as she could read, as could the Porter
family. Robert told his father about the box he had helped Kate carry which was
like the one described in the papers.
Kate agreed a price for the furniture and some of Mrs. Thomas' clothes with
John Church and he arranged for their removal. Unsurprisingly, this was to
arouse the suspicion of Mrs. Ives next door who questioned Kate as to what was
going on. Mrs. Church was later to find a purse and diary belonging to Mrs.
Thomas in one of the dresses. There was also a letter from a Mr. Menhennick to whom Henry Porter and John Church paid a
visit. Menhennick knew the real Mrs. Thomas and it
became clear from the discussion that it could well be her body in the box. The
three men, together with Menhennick's solicitor, went
to the Richmond police station
and reported their suspicions. The next day a search was made of No. 2 Vine
Cottages and an axe, razor and some charred bones were recovered, together with
the missing handle from the box found in the river. Thus on the 23rd of March,
a full description of Kate Webster was circulated by the police in connection
with the murder of Mrs. Thomas and the theft of her effects.
Kate had decided to flee to Ireland taking her son
with her - which was to be the first place the police looked for her. She was
arrested on the 28th of March and kept in custody awaiting collection by two
detectives from Scotland Yard. She was brought back to England and taken to Richmond police station
where she made a statement on March 30th and was formally charged with the
murder. The statement accused John Church of being responsible for Mrs. Thomas'
death and he was subsequently arrested and charged with the murder too.
Fortunately, he had a strong alibi and had also assisted the police in
discovering the crimes. At the committal hearing, the charges against him were
dropped while Kate was remanded in custody. She was transferred to Newgate
prison to save the journey by horse drawn prison van across London each day for
her trial.

Trial.Her
trial opened on the 2nd of July
1879 before Mr. Justice Denman at the Central Criminal Court (the Old
Bailey) next door to Newgate. In view of the seriousness of the crime, the
Crown was led by the Solicitor General, Sir Hardinge
Gifford, and Kate was defended by Mr. Warner Sleigh.
A hat maker named Mary Durden gave evidence for the
prosecution telling the court that on the 25th of February, Kate had told her
she was going to Birmingham to take control of the property, jewellery, etc.
that had been left her by a recently deceased aunt. This, the prosecution
claimed, was clear evidence of premeditation, as the conversation had occurred
6 days before the murder. One of the problems of the prosecution case, however,
was proving that the human remains the police had found were actually those of
Mrs. Thomas. It was a weakness that her defence sought to capitalise on,
especially as without the head there was no means of positively identifying
them at that time. Medial evidence was given to show that all the body parts
had belonged to the same person and that they were from a woman in her 50’s.
The defence tried to suggest that Mrs. Thomas could have died of natural
causes, in view of her agitated state, when she was last seen alive leaving
church on the Sunday afternoon. Both Henry Porter and John Church gave evidence
against Kate describing the events of which they had been involved, and her
defence again tried to point the finger of suspicion at them. In his summing
up, the judge, however, pointed to the actions and previously known good
characters of both of them. Two of Kate's friends, Sarah Crease and Lucy Loder, gave evidence of her good nature.
Late on the afternoon of Tuesday, the 8th of July, the jury retired to consider
their verdict, returning just over an hour later to pronounce her guilty.
Before she was sentenced, Kate yet again made a complete denial of the charge
but cleared Church and Porter of any involvement in the crime. As was normal,
she was asked if she had anything to say before she was sentenced and claimed
to be pregnant. She was examined by a panel of matrons drawn from some of the
women present in the court and this claim was dismissed as just another of her
lies. She went back to Newgate and was transferred the next day to Wandsworth
to await execution. It has been suggested that Wandsworth did not have a
condemned cell at this time although it would seem unlikely. In any event, Kate
was guarded round the clock by teams of female prison officers.

Kate was
to make two further "confessions" in Wandsworth, the first
implicating Strong, who was the father of her child. These allegations were
also found to be baseless.
Kate was informed by her solicitor that no reprieve was to be granted to her,
despite a small amount of public agitation for commutation. So on the eve of
her hanging, Kate made another confession to the solicitor in the presence of
the Catholic priest attending her, Father McEnrey,
which seemed somewhat nearer the truth. She stated that she was resigned to her
fate and that she would almost rather be executed than return to a life of
misery and deception.

Execution.The actual
execution of the sentence of death had changed a great deal over the 11 years
between the ending of public hangings and Kate's death, even though the words
of the sentence had not. No longer was it a public spectacle with the prisoner
being given a short drop and allowed to die in agony. William Marwood had made
great improvements to the process and had introduced the "long drop"
method, designed to break the person's neck and cause instant unconsciousness.
The execution was, as usual, to take place three clear Sundays after sentence
and was set for the morning of Tuesday, the 29th of July at Wandsworth prison.
Wandsworth was originally the Surrey House of Correction and had been built in
1851. It took over the responsibility for housing Surrey's condemned
prisoners on the closure of Horsemonger Lane Gaol in 1878.
Kate was to be only the second person and the sole woman to be hanged there.
At 8.45 a.m., the prison bell started to
toll and a few minutes before 9.00 a.m. the Under
Sheriff, the prison governor, Captain Colville, the prison doctor, two male
warders and Marwood formed up outside her cell. Inside, Kate was being
ministered to by Father McEnrey and attended by two
female wardresses. She would have typically been offered a stiff tot of brandy
before the execution commenced. The governor entered her cell and told her that
it was time and she was led out between the two male warders, accompanied by
Father McEnrey, across the yard to the purpose built
execution shed which was nicknamed the "Cold Meat Shed." (See
photo)Having the gallows in a separate
building spared the other prisoners from the sound of the trap falling, and
made it easier too for the staff to deal with the execution and removal of the
body afterwards. As Kate entered the shed, she would have been able to see the
large white painted gallows with the rope dangling in front of her with its
simple noose laying on the trapdoors. The idea of coiling up the rope to bring
the noose to chest level came later, as did the brass eyelet in the noose.
Marwood stopped her on the chalk mark on the double trapdoors and placed a
leather body belt round her waist to which he secured her wrists, while one of
the warders strapped her ankles with a leather strap. She was not pinioned in
her cell, as became the normal practice later. She was supported on the trap by
the two warders standing on planks, (one is just visible in the bottom left
hand corner of the photo) set across it. This had been the normal practice for
some years in case the prisoner fainted or struggled at the last moment.
Marwood placed the white hood over her head and adjusted the noose, leaving the
free rope running down her back. Her last words were, "Lord, have mercy
upon me."He quickly stepped to the
side and pulled the lever, Kate plummeting down some 8 feet into the brick
lined pit below. Marwood used significantly longer drops than later were found
to be necessary. Kate's body was left to hang for the usual hour before being
taken down and prepared for burial. The whole process would have taken around two
minutes in those days and was considered vastly more humane than Calcraft's executions.
The black flag was hoisted on the flag pole above the main gate, where a small
crowd of people had gathered for her execution. They would have seen and heard
nothing and yet these rather pointless gatherings continued outside prisons
during executions until abolition. As the criminal was female no newspaper
reporters were been allowed to attend the execution but the Illustrated Police
News did one of their famous drawings of the scene as they imagined it, with
Marwood putting the hood over a pinioned Kate’s head.The Sheriff’s Cravings show that William
Marwood received £11 for hanging Kate, presumably £10 plus £1 expenses..

Later in
the day, her body was buried in an unmarked grave in one of the exercise yards
at Wandsworth (nobody else was to be buried in this grave although after the
90th execution, the authorities started to re-use male graves, but not hers.)
She is listed in the handwritten prison records as Catherine Webster, interred
29/07/1879. Although she was the second person to be executed at Wandsworth,
she was buried in grave no. 3 as the graves were numbered 1,3, 5, etc. on one
side of the path, while on the other side they were numbered 2, 4, 6, etc. and
it was decided to use those on one side first. In all, 134 men and Kate were to
be hanged at Wandsworth up till 1961 when HenrykNiemasz became the last to suffer (on the 8th of September)
for the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Buxton.

Comment.If
the events of that Sunday evening were exactly as Kate described them, it is
strange that Mrs. Ives did not hear the quarrel or any other noises from next
door. Again why were there bloodstains at the top of the stairs if Mrs. Thomas'
injuries had occurred at the bottom? It is generally held that Kate lay in wait
for Mrs. Thomas and hit her on the head with an axe causing her to fall down
the stairs, where she then strangled her to prevent any further noise. This
would, of course, make the crime one of premeditated murder and is much more in
line with the forensic evidence. Whether Kate decided to kill Mrs. Thomas in
revenge for her earlier telling off or whether it was because she saw a great
opportunity to steal from Vine Cottage, or both, is unclear. It is not unknown for
previously non-violent criminals to turn to violent murder. John Martin Scripps
became, to date, the last British man to be hanged for murder when he was
executed in Singapore in April 1996. He two had convictions for dishonesty. But
what turned Kate to such appalling violence? Did she just snap or had she spent
two hours or so thinking about it? We will never know the answer to these
questions because there was no psychiatric assessment carried out on murderers
back then.

Postscript.It
was reported in October 2010 that Julia Martha Thomas’ skull has finally been
discovered in the grounds of Sir David Attenborough’s property in Park Road, Richmond by workmen
excavating for an extension.He had
purchased a former pub called "The Hole in the Wall" which was
adjacent to his property and has had demolished the rear of the pub.It is highly likely that Kate Webster
frequented "The Hole in the Wall".The coroners report stated that the skull had fractures consistent with
falling down stairs and also had depleted collagen which suggested it had been
boiled.